Bada Bing!
Neil and I have been watching season one and two of the Sopranos. My friend lent it to us and we thought it would take forever to watch. In fact, Neil didn't even really care to watch it. But last Saturday we started watching season one, as nothing else was worth watching on TV, and the next thing we knew it was Sunday evening, we were still in our pajamas and we had watched all of season one and the beginning of season two. We're hooked. I need to find someone who has the other seasons so I don't have to rent it!
I've been fascinated with the Mafia for a while now. Actually, perhaps a better way to describe it is that I've been romanticized. I'm sure it's not as romantic as I've made it out to be, but it's provided some good day dreams...and even fantasies!
The first fiction writing class that I took in college I wrote a piece about a woman in the Mafia. I wrote it in first person, as if it were a magazine article, or a short bio...a woman telling how she became involved in the business that her father ran before his death, and the life that her mother loathed.
It's not a great story...and aside from a few engaging scenes, I'd even say it's not a good story, either. But, I haven't been drawn to fiction, I mostly like creative non-fiction and memoir, so it was basically my first real attempt at it. I felt embarrassed to read the piece out loud in the class, as everyone had to do, with a round table feedback session proceeding it. It was an idea that I had kicked around in my head for a long time and figured I might as well finally write it. But I think the story was a little too much of a fantasy and not one to really share with a group, at least at my level of writing. I felt crushed by some of the comments my classmates gave me. I wanted to create a story that made it believable that a woman could be powerful in the Mafia, and I got pretty attached to that.
I did receive some good feedback and was able to improve the story a great deal, but one comment frustrated me deeply and I can still recall the man saying it, several years later.
He said that I should be careful not to make it sound too much like The Godfather or The Sopranos, as it's already been done before. The hitch, for me, was that when I wrote the story I hadn't seen either the movie(s) or the TV show. In a sense I felt kind of good because it meant that I wrote something that reminded him of two praised works, but I wanted to be recognized for the fact that I didn't know what those works were like and somehow my story was able to resemble to them. In the end, I didn't want people to think that I wrote a story just because I liked The Godfather or that The Sopranos was popular.
I couldn't help but pull the story out the other night, after watching The Sopranos. It was embarrassing to read to Neil...who was I to write such things? But, I think I'd like to give it another shot. And not for people to read this time, just to see how I would approach it now that I've had more writing experience and developed my voice a bit more. We'll see.
Sometimes, trying to make the fantasy real actually ruins the romance of it.
Love,
Aislinn
I've been fascinated with the Mafia for a while now. Actually, perhaps a better way to describe it is that I've been romanticized. I'm sure it's not as romantic as I've made it out to be, but it's provided some good day dreams...and even fantasies!
The first fiction writing class that I took in college I wrote a piece about a woman in the Mafia. I wrote it in first person, as if it were a magazine article, or a short bio...a woman telling how she became involved in the business that her father ran before his death, and the life that her mother loathed.
It's not a great story...and aside from a few engaging scenes, I'd even say it's not a good story, either. But, I haven't been drawn to fiction, I mostly like creative non-fiction and memoir, so it was basically my first real attempt at it. I felt embarrassed to read the piece out loud in the class, as everyone had to do, with a round table feedback session proceeding it. It was an idea that I had kicked around in my head for a long time and figured I might as well finally write it. But I think the story was a little too much of a fantasy and not one to really share with a group, at least at my level of writing. I felt crushed by some of the comments my classmates gave me. I wanted to create a story that made it believable that a woman could be powerful in the Mafia, and I got pretty attached to that.
I did receive some good feedback and was able to improve the story a great deal, but one comment frustrated me deeply and I can still recall the man saying it, several years later.
He said that I should be careful not to make it sound too much like The Godfather or The Sopranos, as it's already been done before. The hitch, for me, was that when I wrote the story I hadn't seen either the movie(s) or the TV show. In a sense I felt kind of good because it meant that I wrote something that reminded him of two praised works, but I wanted to be recognized for the fact that I didn't know what those works were like and somehow my story was able to resemble to them. In the end, I didn't want people to think that I wrote a story just because I liked The Godfather or that The Sopranos was popular.
I couldn't help but pull the story out the other night, after watching The Sopranos. It was embarrassing to read to Neil...who was I to write such things? But, I think I'd like to give it another shot. And not for people to read this time, just to see how I would approach it now that I've had more writing experience and developed my voice a bit more. We'll see.
Sometimes, trying to make the fantasy real actually ruins the romance of it.
Love,
Aislinn
posted by Aislinn at
7:15 PM
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